Marriage & Family

In your recent book “The Temperament God gave your Spouse” you review the four classic temperaments as a way of understanding how people naturally react; could you explain these and tell us how you came to be interested in this age-old concept in the present day?

We were introduced to the classic four temperaments (originally proposed by Hippocrates) by a priest who shared with us how temperament (the way we naturally tend to react to our environment) influences our spiritual lives; subsequently, we discovered that understanding temperament is not only a great way to get to know ourselves better (and therefore improve ourselves) but also it has a great bearing on our relationships—with God, with our spouse and with our children. Art discovered in his marriage counseling that many couples who came in for counseling were often arguing or fighting about a temperament issue!

The California Supreme Court decided several weeks ago that doctors specializing in assisted reproductive technologies may not assert their religious freedom as a defense to California’s Civil Rights law requirement that businesses provide services without discrimination on the basis of clients’ sexual orientation. A fertility clinic willing to treat heterosexual patients must therefore also treat homosexual patients.Read

Many same-sex couples ardently desire to have their unions recognized as true marriages. A substantial number of people in our society believe that this desire ought to be honored. They and same-sex couples with this desire also think that opposition to the public recognition of the marital character of their relationship is an unjust prejudice. They firmly believe that same-sex couples can live in a committed relationship and have a right to seal their commitment in marriage (e.g., Steven Macedo, "Sexuality and Liberty: Making Room for Nature and Traditions?" in Sex, Preference, and Family: Essays on Law and Nature, ed. David M. Estlund and Martha Nussbaum, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 86-101). They emphasize that the actual capacity to generate children is not necessary for a valid marriage; after all, opponents of same-sex marriage acknowledge the validity of the marriages of men and women known to be sterile and incapable of having children. It seems that the principal reason why some oppose same-sex marriage is simply unreasonable prejudice. Read

1. Dr. Mabe, thank you for agreeing to provide a follow-up interview regarding your publication on the treatment of childhood conduct disorder. In the first interview, you described the essential features of Conduct Disorder as repetitive and persistent patterns of behavior in which the basic rights of others and major age-appropriate societal norms or rules are violated. Further you noted that a variety of factors represent risk factors, discussing the impact of biological, socio-cultural, and early life experiences. I would be interested in hearing what the research shows about the other factors you presented: peer experiences, social experiences in various institutions; and early exposure to violence on television or videogames?

July 25 1968 is the date of Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae, in which he affirmed: “there is an inseparable connection, willed by God and unable to be broken by man on his own initiative, between the two meanings of the conjugal act: the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning” (no.12). This meaning is severed by contraception and also by the new modes of generating human life in the laboratory: artificial insemination by a donor (better expressed as “artificial insemination by a vendor”), in vitro fertilization, cloning, and other artificial reproductive technologies (ARTs).

P. Alex Mabe received his doctoral degree in clinical psychology from Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. Currently, he is professor and Chief of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry and Health Behavior at the Medical College of Georgia. His publications include over 40 articles in the areas of clinical child and pediatric psychology. Additionally, he has made numerous presentations at national and international professional meetings on topics related to children’s mental health, family and parent management training. Dr. Mabe is licensed as a psychologist in Georgia and South Carolina and has been providing clinical psychology services to children and their families in the Central Savannah River Area for over 25 years.

The use of condoms to prevent transmission of a disease is intrinsically evil because the object freely chosen that specifies the moral nature of the act is not the marital act, an act in which husband wife give and receive one another and become literally “one flesh,” but a different kind of act, one that in no way unites them but rather changes utterly the “language of the body.” by William E. May, Michael J. McGivney Professor of Moral Theology Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family Read